


Vices

by willyouboy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Always Female Castiel, Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Camp Chitaqua, Comfort/Angst, Drug Use, Endverse, F/M, Female Castiel, Female!Cas, Future Castiel, Future Dean Winchester, Genderswap, Light Angst, My First Destiel Fanfic, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:39:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1936077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willyouboy/pseuds/willyouboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through the Endverse Dean and Cas try to try. They keep chafing at Chitaqua while periodically remembering that it hasn't always been that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Chuck knows to always knock before he goes in. She doesn’t always hear at first but she gets to the door eventually.  
She answers after his fifth try, cracks the door open, eyes heavy lidded from who knows which thing. She’s got bedhead going on even though her dark hair is hardly long enough for that. She’s barefoot and has got a raggedy patchwork blanket tucked beneath her armpits. Her small smile happens later than her eye contact. “Hey Chuck.”

“Um, Dean’s looking for you.”

“Looks like you’re looking for me.” 

She says it with a half smirk but her eyes look somewhere between tired and disappointed, again. 

He’s really always kind of hated being the middle man. Sometimes he thinks that the two of them have forgotten that he didn’t used to be. But this, it's just the way things are nowadays. Luckily, before he has to actually beg her out of her cabin, she excuses herself to go get dressed. She must be high. Usually, if she were drunk, she’d invite him in. Nothing happens, he’s pretty sure she’s just teasing. About eighty percent sure at this point. Either way, he always nervously laughs it off then goes on his way as quick as he can with her chuckling behind him.  
This time, he leaves her cabin at a regular pace and figures she’ll be ready soon enough. 

‘’’’’’’’’

 

Cas shows up to Dean’s cabin half an hour later since Chuck stopped by. She'd rolled around in bed a little bit, had kicked out the kid who had brought over her most recent handfull of pills. She honestly can’t think of his name. After he was gone though she had dropped the blanket and padded over to the corner of the room to splash water on her face, finger combed her hair a little too. It'd started to get a bit long for her, tickled her ears sometimes. She had leaned forward in the mirror to make sure she’d gotten all the sleep mostly wiped off of her face. When it had seemed good enough, then it was time to get dressed.

Cas had pulled on what was nearest; a grey v-neck and an old pair of jeans folded on a bookshelf that she uses solely as a dresser now. The one for books is at Dean’s place. They should change that. Maybe she’ll bring it up this time at the meeting after the fearless leader gets done with whatever he wants to cover today. There’s no telling how long that will take to hear, plus, there's actually doing whatever he wants done so she brought a sweater with her just in case. The sun’ll be going down in a little while.

She knocks once when she gets there but there are already voices mumbling inside so she just lets herself in. It’s more packed than she’d expected. Some people are seated around the table and a few are standing around it, leaning against the wall and talking amongst themselves. Nobody looks upset yet so maybe the meeting part of the meeting hasn’t actually started. She rises up onto her tip toes and grabs the side of the doorway for balance as she peeks deeper into the room. She’s about to squeeze her way through when she hears him behind her.

“Bout time you showed up.”

“Missed you too.”

It doesn’t come out with as much bite as she’d meant for it to. Oh well, it’s not like he would’ve noticed the difference. She might as well have not said anything.

“I need you to read something.”

“Where is it?”

He frowns at her, eyes roving over her face long enough that their rim of the room is quieting down. Cas looks at a few of them then and stares until they look away. She can still feel his eyes nicking at the side of her face and without turning she takes a breath and barely stops herself from turning it into a sigh. 

“Lemme see your eyes.”

“I’m high. High as a bird, high as a kite. Take your pick.” It's an exaggeration to affected she really is but she still doesn’t look at him, keeps her eyes scanning the crowd to see if anyone’s daring to look at them in the doorway. “Should I go to my room, sir?” 

She knows that the nearest couple people heard and she kinda hopes they’ll look up. She’s got a middle finger ready and all she needs is one more little thing to get her out of here. She’ll take just about anything. Dean comes up with an easier way. He usually does. “Outside." His voice doesn’t sound altogether mad, just exhausted if she had to call it anything. He walks out the door and holds it open with his back to her and the rest of everyone. Once she’s out too she takes it and closes it for him. Before he even says anything she starts to sit down on the outer wall of the cabin but then he speaks up saying, “Come on,” as he goes down the porch steps. He still doesn’t sound upset exactly and whatever the tone is it’s starting to chafe at her. Maybe he’s annoyed, it’d make sense. Maybe he's at that level of frustrated where he’s not quite at pissed but he’s obviously irritated enough that she’s about to get chewed out somewhere private. 

Both their boots crunch through the dried grass until they’ve gone only a couple cabins down. Dean just goes up to the door to let himself in. Cas waits at the bottom of the steps. “You coming?” She follows him inside.


	2. Chapter 2

Their footsteps creak and echo a little as they go down the short hallway. Dean gestures at a chair that’s set against the wall. He leans his shoulders against the wall at a spot nearby. Cas turns the chair a little so that they’re at least facing each other a bit better. She’s not sure why. It’s probably that ongoing mix of loyalty and deference. Some deeply rooted habit that's been there since the day they met. Either way, the best she can do is turn the chair to him slightly. She keeps her gaze no higher than his knees, even when she breaks the silence between them. 

“Whose place is this?”

“Dereck’s.”

“I thought it was Norman’s.”

“It was.”

Oh. “Oh.”

She doesn’t want details. He's learned that, thankfully. 

It gets quiet again. She chances a look up at him and he’s already looking at her. His face is hard to read. His gaze is steady and she feels like one of his scrawled out maps right then. He’s just staring as if something will come to him eventually, some sort of way out, a breakthrough in an old puzzle. God, how was it that she used to actually like this, iniat this even? She's too sober for this. “What do you want, sir?” She knows he hates when she calls him that. Maybe she reminds him of his father. Hopefully it does. 

Whatever he’s thinking it gets the results she wants. He breaks the eye contact with a huffed breath, wipes a hand down his face and sighs out, “I’m not in the mood, Cas.”

“Not in the mood for what?” She keeps her eyes on him and tightens the knot of the sweater tied around her waist.

He raises his hand toward her then drops it in an aborted gesture. “For _this_ , this snippy Courtney Love act.”

“Okay,” she nods in her seat, eyes on his knees, jaw going tight, “so can I go to my room?” 

“Why, so you can get to your shit? Gonna run away?”

“Basically.”

“Seriously, Cas?”

He brings his back up from against the wall and she can already imagine his face, that pressed line of his lips and his green eyes gone harsh and overshadowed by his brow. He breathes heavy when he’s angry and it shows in his shoulders. When Cas actually does look up, she’s not disappointed. He’s just as she expected. He's coiling up and he probably doesn't even realize it. She has to make herself sit up to match his scrutiny as she crosses her legs. “Yeah, seriously.” 

She hears his inhale, sees the momentary flinch of his nostrils. For a second his fingers curl to touch his palms. She wants to stand, too. There’s a quiet prickle at the soles of her feet. Her fight or flight is starting to kick in and she wants to stand. His hand coming down firm on the back of her chair keeps her in place, makes her almost jump. Maybe if she weren’t a woman he would’ve put his hands on her. That thought has been weaving in and out lately.

What it turns out that actually makes her jump is his thumb at her back, gently and hesitatingly going over the same two notches of her spine through her shirt. “Come on angel.”

His voice is the same deceptive softness it always is when he calls her that.

Cas bites her tongue. Her neck goes hot. The heat crumbles inside of her and ripples down to her fingertips, down through her legs and into her toes. He can’t do that. He knows it’s not fair. She wants to lean back, let the soothing circles he’s making help her forget that she’s sobering up, that her 4-6 hours are up. At the same time, she wants to lean back and crush his thumb, pin it between her spine and the chair, wants to stun him just long enough so that she can get out of here, get out of this room. She needs to get out. She needs him to stop or go further. 

“Look,” he goes on, ignorant of the storm in her, “Hey . . . I know he was better at this kind of thing, but I’m trying here, okay?”

“What are you trying to do?” 

And there's a bite to it because if Sam is off limits for her, then Sam should be off limits for him, too.

“Get you back on track.”

“Oh fuck you, Dean.” 

Her eyes are sharp on him. His thumb has stopped moving. She knows that her cheeks must be flushed by now. 'On track'? Really? Well this must be a recent project. From what she recalls it was mostly Bobby who dealt with her after the Fall. Dean had been missing in action until she had been given the human independence level of a homeschooled teenager, until he had moved the three of them to here, to Camp Chitaqua. Dean had had nothing to do with the fixing. He has no right. He'd had his chance. He doesn't get to pick how she manages her existence. She's this close to telling him so but he’s taken his hand away from the back of the chair altogether. Cas uncrosses her legs because he's got that look as he faces her straight on and leans down, hands set onto his knees. There's no avoiding being eye to eye now. 

“No. Fuck you princess.”

It's said the same way he'd tell her to take point or get out of his way.

She has to remind herself to square her shoulders as Dean goes on, as if it'll save her from his words somehow. “First of all, how’ve you been getting stuff? Is it that new kid? I’ve seen him go to your cabin, Cas. Actually, lemme ask you this.” He leans forward just slightly, brows going up a pinch, “Is he just your supplier or are you robbing cradles now?”

Someone knocks at the front door.


	3. Chapter 3

Chuck sounds as nervous as he looks when Dean answers the door. Chuck's blinking in little fits as he speaks to him, saying something about the meeting. As the men mumble a few feet away Cas takes advantage of the distraction by getting up and going out through the back door. She shuts it just a little harder than necessary, just for Dean.

Oh, she absolutely hears him call out to her after she crosses the main pathway in the camp but keeps up her march across the dried out grass and gravel all the way back to her place. The prickle is still there in the soles of her feet even as she sits down to take off her boots. She leaves her socks on as she stands again. 

She needs something. Her hands aren’t steady. She just needs to steady her nerves. She strides into each room eyes scanning the whole time, trying to find something specific to be in the mood for. She kinda hates choosing. 

Her wandering path leads her back to the wooden chair with her boots sitting beside it. She sits and pulls off her socks, tucks them away into her shoes. She crosses her ankle over the knee of her other leg and starts to rub her foot. It's not as if a lot of walking happened today, she just likes the way it feels. It'd be hard not to like the pressured ovals she makes with the pads of her thumbs as she massages away her aches. She cracks her toes then switches to the other foot, takes a few deep breaths. It works. She doesn’t feel so much of that hot itch going through her. God, he knows her buttons.

She knows what she wants now.

It’s golden amber, half gone, and shining in a bottle on the windowsill. It used to be his whiskey. They used to share it after some of their unscathed outings beyond the camp's safety. It seems perfect right about now. After all, she escaped that damn meeting. Close enough. They always drag out for one reason or another. And the closing argument is always the same: Do what I say and you'll live. Cas really doubts she'd missed anything.

She grabs up the bottle of whiskey and takes it with her into her bedroom. At the threshold she smiles to herself at the sound that the beads make, at the waterlike tingle that happens when they delicately roll across her closed eyes. The bottle passing through the swaying beads clinks faint and hollow. There isn’t too much liquid left, but there’ll be enough for her for now. She screws off the top before she sits on one of the moth nibbled pillows in her roost that she’s created over the last couple years.

The first swig makes her scrape her teeth against her tongue as she swallows. The aftertaste is awful, but at least it won’t last. She takes a deeper pull the next time and accepts the burn that comes with it. She takes another pull, it’s shallower. She’s had a few mishaps about rushing things with alcohol so she lets the liquid swish around in her mouth until her lips feel spicy. She likes that part. It makes her feel like something special’s still in her. Around an hour later it makes her feel like she’s something special. And after that, she'll feel like she's somewhere special. In the meantime, she lays back, eyes closed and waits.

The cue that she's waited long enough is when the world feels like it’s moving like water. She can still breathe though. Her mouth just has a texture as if she’s sucked on a sponge. Her ears have a muted thunder playing on repeat in her head so she’s been missing the continuous tapping at her bedroom window. Whoever it is lucks out because she happened to be reaching around the blankets for the bottle and had decided to chance a peek up at the sound, very much at the risk of crossing the line into getting completely nauseous. 

The face in her window is smiling, shaking its head. He taps the window again and Cas holds up a finger, signaling for him to wait. She rolls onto her stomach and that sensation is such a mistake. She closes her eyes tight, until her whole face is scrunched as she waits on her elbows for the feeling to pass before she gathers her knees beneath herself then goes from kneeling to standing. 

She pulls both hands through her short hair until she gets to the back of her neck then she interlaces her fingers and waits for her balance to find her before daring to tread over to the window.

Cas doesn’t remember the process, but somehow the guy has crawled inside. He’s standing nearby and helping himself to a shot's swallow of the whiskey. She’s sitting on a chair backwards, her forehead lying on her arms feld over the chairback. Having the spins isn’t the same with her eyes open, isn’t the same after moving. It’d be nice to put her face on something cool, something like tile that’ll be hard on her cheekbone. 

It’s not exactly what she wants but she feels a cold hand against the side of her face. She leans into it. She can hear a chuckle in front of her. When had she closed her eyes? She tries to open them but they feel so heavy, she’s not even sure if she needs to open them for this part. The stranger’s hands are helping her lie down. Maybe it’s not a stranger though, because he doesn’t touch her shyly, doesn’t treat her like glass.


	4. Chapter 4

She remembers him now, right as he’s tugging up her shirt. The skin of his hands feels rough against her stomach. He cups her breasts through her bra on his way to pulling her shirt over her head. The best she can do is roll over onto her stomach to try to stop him. She’s too late and clumsy though, he’s already done it. Her shirt's somewhere she can't see it anymore. He’s moved on to wriggling his fingers under her and unbuttoning and unzipping her pants even as she presses her hips down, tries to make as little room as possible for him and his rough fingers to work. He’s stronger though. She doesn’t have any grace to depend on.  
“Geh off. . .” 

Her words slur into the corner of a dirty pillow. She can hardly hear herself. He slaps a hand against her thigh and she moves on autopilot, flips over for him as he starts to tug her jeans down. She knows this part. He’s straddling her, only bothers with getting her pants caught down and around her knees before he pulls his fingertips down from her navel and to the elastic of her underwear. She raises her heavy head enough to look down the length of herself and sees that he’s made pink lines with how hard he’d pressed into her skin. She doesn’t want the lines. She doesn’t want any of this. Her voice is weak, ". . . go.”

“Go on?” He says it with a lopsided grin that shows teeth, scratches down her stomach again. “Were you really an angel?”

Her nose stings before she can help it. She feels like she’s been slapped, would rather have been slapped. That sting wouldn’t follow her into the night. Dammit, there'll be dreams tonight.

Her eyes find the window this man had climbed through. It’s not even night time yet. Something like this is supposed to happen in the night, in the dark.

He pushes up her bra, not caring that the underwire scrapes on its way up. The feeling makes her close her eyes. She opens them when her wrists hit the floor, hard. She doesn’t even remember raising them. He’s pinning them painfully beside her shoulders.  
What did she do? 

Hopefully she’d tried to fight back. She’s not sure.

Since her hands aren’t free she crosses her legs. But that’s right. Her pants are already down. He seems to remember too because he switches his grip so that he’s got both of her wrists sorely paired together in one hand. 

His free hand grabs at her chest, squeezes each breast at least twice until he gets bored with that.

Cas tries to roll onto her stomach again. Her nose has started stinging again and her eyes are wide as the world around her spins dizzyingly. Maybe she’s moving, maybe she’s not.

While the rest of her body struggles underneath him, her stomach flips over on its own and she gags. He does slap her then, threatens to spit if she needs water. Without even thinking about it she rolls her lips in and presses them together tightly. She can’t scream like this, but she doesn’t want his mouth on her. 

It happens anyway, not on her lips. His mouth lands right over her heart, slick and foreign. He’s messy as he trails down to a nipple and bites too hard to be doing anything for her besides hurt. It makes her gasp and cringe and her stomach flips again. She almost prays but then remembers. It hadn’t done anything last time. 

She jerks her arms and one hand gets free. She squeezes his throat as hard as she can once she manages to get ahold of it.

It’s enough to get him off of her chest, enough to make him put his knee onto her navel to try and keep her still.

She heaves and retches.

He scrambles off of her as she vomits on her back, barely has the wherewithal to turn her head to the side as the front door clicks closed. The heated wet of it spills down the side of her cheek and thickens at her chin. She doesn’t want to move. She lets it happen until her insides are still for at least ten minutes. The acidic smell is puddled there right beneath her nose, smeared against it in fact.

She wipes her face against a clean patch of her pillow when she's sure that her stomach's empty, can feel some of the fine threads of vomit stick to the edge of her lips.  
The sun is setting the next time she opens her eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

When she wakes up her head feels like the heaviest thing she’s ever had to lift. Her neck feels like a crushed toothpick. The first thing she does is drag herself over to lock her window then double check the front door. Her fingers shake and feel empty the entire time. She feels sore and bone tired so she sleeps some more, curls up in a corner with a pile of soft things and doesn’t wake up until the next day.

Late the next morning she washes up in a daze, throws out the stained pillow, the one she'd used as a napkin yesterday. She needs water. She needs a meal too. She doesn’t do much about that except sits with her back to the bedroom wall and daydream about what she’ll need to do to get some. She’d have to go out there. Not out there out there, but she’d have to get out of her cabin and brace all that sunshine and fresh air. She hates hangovers.

Cas must’ve dozed off because the knock to her front door makes her jump awake, makes her burning eyes blink widely. Her heart beats around like a poked wild animal as she swallows and makes herself stand.  
He wouldn’t come back this soon. That’d be too risky for him, right?

The knocking happens again before she realizes that he probably wouldn’t knock in the first place. 

Cas makes her way to the door with unsure steps.A peephole would be handy. 

The knocking happens again, even with her hand on the doorknob, and this time she hears her name alongside it. She tugs the door open just enough to see who it is.

Chuck's arms are full of bookmarked books and lined paper. He looks a bit overwhelmed but then confused when he sees that she hasn’t opened the door more than the width of her eye as she stares out at him. He goes on with what he’d planned to say anyway.

“Uh, hey. So these are the texts from the meeting the other day. We need some translations. They might help.”

Reading is not what her hangover needs.

She cracks the door open a little more, “How soon does he need them?”

Her voice sounds awful to both of them but Chuck doesn’t comment on it, Cas clears her throat a little. 

“As soon as possible?”

She nearly lets herself smile. Chuck’s been doing this since as long as she’s known him. He’s always careful not to use too many abbreviations or acronyms around her, says everything the full way. She’s not sure if she should break it to him that that Cas, the one who used to be confused by verbal isms is long gone.

“Okay,” is all she says as she opens up the door wide enough to take in her work for the next day or so. No rest for the wicked.

She starts to retreat back inside but notices that Chuck hasn’t walked off even though his delivery assignment appears done. 

It’s strange. He’s just staring, wringing his fingers before he takes a breath.

“You don’t look so good.”

“Well aren’t you a flirt.”

He doesn’t go for the bait that would usually have him giving her room.

“ . . . you alright?”

“’m just tired.” Please just go.

He awkwardly shoves his hands into his pockets after missing once then nods.

“I’ll let Dean know you got everything then.”

The best Cas can do is a tight lipped dismissing smile as she closes the door and locks it with her free hand while craddling her work.

She brings it deeper into her cabin then drops it onto the table and drops herself into the chair. Her body needs a few more breaths before she coaxes it to stand back up and get some water. She’s got a stash of water bottles in the corner. She brings one to the table, downs half the bottle before she finally opens the first marked page she’ll need to translate.  
Hmm. So he’s still on the track that croats are some kind of demon thing. Better kinda safe than sorry she supposes. 

She picks up the pen and poises it over the lined paper as she reads on. Sometimes, during translations, she’d purposefully transcribe in overly layman terms or add non-relevant doodles in the corners just to mess with Dean, just to somewhat lighten up their mundane duty of keeping an entire campfull of humanity alive. She’s not in the mood this time as she writes. 

She doesn’t need to but she mumbles some of the words to herself as she goes, just to hear them. It’s been a while. 

. . . is she really the last one, the last one here? Well, technically not. She’s not quite sure she counts as angel anymore.

When she deems that it's time for a break, she gets up and walks around, grabs another water bottle. 

She goes back to the table and works until her eyes won’t let her anymore. She’s hungry, but she’ll just get something when she gets up next time. Her stomach might not be ready anywary.


	6. Chapter 6

She manages to snack in between translating. It’s mostly protein bars and dried fruit. Both things dry out her mouth and make her jaw ache. She needs a break.

Cas rolls her shoulders and stands. 

She doesn’t walk immediately. Her legs still feel like jelly. She strips in place, tosses her clothes into a growing pile. When she gets her legs to move she goes for another water bottle to try to keep the heat from burning through her skin. 

Oh. She sees it when she twists the bottle shut, sees the bruise on her breast, mottled and mauve. No use crying over spilt milk. Dean had taught her that one.  
Her eyes flit away from the purple mark quickly and go to her bookshelf full of clothes. It wouldn’t hurt to put on something clean so she does, chooses something casual and worn in. Well, all of her stuff is worn in really, but she picks something a little more worn in than everything else, something softer. The t-shirt is thin and used to be white, her black jeans aren’t as hole-proof as they used to be. 

Cas puts on her boots before she heads out with a sweater and a water bottle in hand. 

It must be some time in the afternoon, probably earlier than five, maybe? Dinner should be happening soon. She’s not sure exactly if she’ll be up for it, if her stomach will be up for it. 

So, maybe she’ll stick to snacking. Either way, it’s nice to be out of her place. The sun feels good. It almost distracts her from the indistinct headache that’s beginning at the base of her skull. 

Cas squeezes the back of her neck as she crunches through the yellow grass and pine needles between her cabin and the next. She hardly visits her neighbors. They’re older compared to the others. She’d rather not get attached. Although, they’ve made if pretty far for their age in the end of days. 

Cas kicks a stone and it knocks against the corner of their cabin in a dull way, rolls a few times until it stops in her path a few feet ahead. She resists the urge to kick it again as she walks down the back pathway behind the cabins. There’s not much back here except for overgrown plants and abandoned things like cracked coolers, rusted tent poles, sundried plastic bags, things like that. She’s already picked through back here for knickknacks and useful things. There’d only been a few marbles that she’d scavenged for her small eclectic collection. Something about the colors in the light. It’s a manmade sort of beauty. 

She’d found the first marble while Bobby had been around. It was lavender, had a smear of a red line through the middle. It’d been rolling around when she’d swept out one of the cabins for one of the new additions to the camp at the time. It should have been okay to ask Dean if he’d ever played marbles growing up. It should be okay to bring up Sam every now and then. Maybe they’ll get there some day.

Yeah, and then maybe she’ll get her wings back and maybe God will show up sometime, and world peace, everlasting cures, all of that. Yeah.

And maybe she can ask to forget a few things. Maybe she can ask to have a few things, like warm baths. No, hot baths, like before Chitaqua. Baths where she can use the shower gel to make bubbles while Dean hums something on the other side of the door. Baths where she can feel new, feel like her skin is new, like it’s always been hers. A bath where she can use one of those things, those things that always seem to be some shade of pastel, to scrub away the dirt and grime and sin off of her. Yeah, the way she used it she could usually get down to the sin until her skin was stingy and rose tinted. They can’t get rid of bruises though she’s noticed. So maybe that wouldn’t be too helpful right now, but it’d probably make her feel better anyway. 

Try as she might, she can’t put the face together fully in her mind. She can’t quite get the features in her head to match up into a definite face. 

She’d let him in and the fucking whiskey and a knee to her own stomach had been the only things that’d kept her from being a complete victim. 

He’d manhandled her. She can feel his fingers so suddenly that she scratches at herself through her clothes as she shuts her eyes. It’s not that simple though. 

She can feel his weight over her and the uselessness of trying to cross her naked legs. 

A hot wave of nausea starts from the back of her knees and flows upwards until it reaches the back of her throat. 

Not hungry. She’s not hungry. She can’t go to that dining hall and not know whether or not she’s sitting across from him.

It’s like walking through a dream as she goes back to her cabin, it’s that awful slow and uncoordinated gait that gets her to her front door. 

She realizes going back inside is a mistake almost as soon as her room comes into sight. 

Not here. She can’t be here right now.

She needs something before she goes though. Her hands are shaking. 

She looks to the windowsill and grabs the repurposed box for playing cards that she’s filled with hand-rolled cigarettes. They aren’t purely nicotine which makes them perfect for a walk around some less densely populated part of camp. She can always find a lighter through someone on the way. She can’t stay and look for hers. She’s been in here too long already.

Cas pockets her prize and is out the door and away from her place in a matter of a couple minutes at the most. There are a trickle of people that pass her as she goes. They’re on their way to dinner and she makes sure she’s going against the grain. Nothing new about that trend at least.


	7. Chapter 7

Thankfully, someone in the sparse crowd has agreed to lend her a lighter.  
Crisis averted. 

Today’s spot to light up is the camp’s dilapidated playground where she leans against one of the poles of the swingless swing set after pulling on her sweater. The metal’s cold against her back even through the fabric, but it’s fine. Things are starting to get fine, will get finer, great even, as she takes a pull of the smoke, faintly sweet and very familiar.

The sun’s going down behind the pines and some of the clouds are glowing with cotton candy warmth. It’s not too cold out, the wind’s not too bad. Things aren’t too bad today, considering. 

As she absently rolls her spine against the pole she looks out at the salmon pinks and the deep lavenders of the sky. And it goes so far, and it’s so vast.  
The world is covered in color. It’s been getting harder and harder to admit when things are beautiful but this, this reminds her of God. That he was here once. Maybe he’s still there, out there somewhere watching her absently scratch her back against a rusty pole like her sweater, and her shirt, and her skin will shed away to let her wings break free. Maybe he’s watching her act like a fucking buck whose antlers are shedding.

She laughs. Just that whole image makes her laugh. A molting angel and God’s appalled gaze.

That’s not how it works, how it worked. To be fair though, when the gates first closed, when she’d started to accept what would happen, she had pictured it almost like molting. Like autumn really, like a season where things just cascade off of you until you’re bare.

It had been almost like that, but not quite. Falling hadn’t been some gradual transition. There hadn’t been signs she’d known to look for. It’d been more like dementia. Or like whatever it’s called when you start to forget the order of historical events that aren’t in any books, or which Mary you feel more sorry for, or the names of your brothers, or your father’s voice. 

So maybe falling was more like going deaf. No, not going deaf, just becoming deaf.

No one had told her that it would be so quiet. It made sense though, because there’d been no one left here to talk to. No one like her. Her language was dead, archaic, absolutely obsolete. She was the last of her kind for all intents and purposes and that fact had clung to her so rancidly. It must have been and probably still is radiating from her in wafts and she’s not sure how Bobby had managed to scrub even an ounce of that off of her, out of her.

It’s hard to accept her memories of him trying to use Enochian with her, his gruff stumble over her mother tongue, the way he’d pull his cap onto her, down past her eyes if she laughed too hard at his stuttering.

“Shit.”  
The sudden burn to her fingers makes her drop the cigarette. She sucks her stung fingertips into her mouth as she stamps out the embers. Last thing they’d need is a fire. According to the mighty fearless one, anyone posing a fire hazard deserves to give life outside the camp another try. Speaking of his numerous commandments, she should get back to those translations.

Cas spends the walk to her cabin mostly looking up. 

Things aren’t as pink as they were earlier. The dark’s moving in. If she tilts her head back far enough she can see stars peeking through. If she leans back just a little further then she can almost feel her legs kick up, feel both her heels leave the ground, carry her up like she supposes it’s supposed to feel like when you float on your back in a body of water. That had been an awful experience. Not Dean leading her out barefoot to the abandoned hotel’s pool just after sunset where the concrete was still warm, but things had turned awful at that moment when she’d just gotten used to his braced hands against her back and he’d let go. She must’ve arched too far or been too tense but either way the water just poured into her, nose first. She’d scrambled and coughed and spluttered and couldn’t feel anything but her own skin and the water, but she could hear Dean laughing, “It’s just a little water Cas. It happens.” 

She’d taken herself up the steps and out of the pool and had blown her nose into the towel hanging on the gate with her cheeks hot. A wolf whistle from him followed her but nothing else for a good while. She’d been dried off and huddled in the bed for an hour before he’d come back to the room, both of them probably knowing that she wasn’t really sleeping.

Her eyes feel heavy and the sky looks the same as she blinks up at it, still standing beside the rusted over playground. Her feet are still on the ground. The slips of the breeze through her layers almost feel wet. There aren’t enough clouds for that, for rain, but still. Maybe she just can’t see it falling. 

Cas puts her hands through her hair but it’s the same dry mess that it usually is so that doesn’t help. She pulls her fingers through again, this time just for the tickle to her scalp. He used to do that to wake her up, would keep at it until she smiled. 

It’s a small grin, only one her cheeks can feel as she starts walking toward her cabin again. Her fingers rove lazily at the nape of her neck the entire way. When she’s back inside she locks up then sits at the table. She puts out a sigh that turns into a laugh somewhere because she’d hardly made any headway in her notes earlier. Something’s better than nothing though. Well, sometimes. She’s learned that it just depends. 

Without anything additionally written she checks that she’s locked the doors, checks the windows too while she’s up. She sits again, honestly expecting to start but the seat is so rigid so she takes off her sweater and arranges it beneath her. She shifts in place for a couple minutes until everything feels as close to right as she can get and hooks her ankles around the chair legs. Her stomach grumbles right as she picks up the pen. It’s too late, she’s comfortable. She’ll just bother Chuck later if she has to for a snack. 

As she reads she mumbles the words to herself and that seems to settle her enough into getting a few lines down. It all feels clumsy though, reading this. The thick script is broken and touching in the awkward places. Her language looks so heavy on the page. It’s not even hers if she thinks about it. It never really was for angels. It was for man to understand heaven. 

It didn’t work. It never worked and it’s still not working. 

Paradise and this world haven’t touched since Eden. Even now, for whatever she’s become, the words seem more and more imported. This is sound made solid and is nothing but alien. But what curls her toes still bound in her boots is that the way the words sound inside of her feels like a conversation. Each syllable is like dropping something heavy and feeling the relief. It’s like thunder in this body. It’s like wind dragging in your ears and nowhere else. It’s better than a heartbeat after something rough has just ended. Cas puts down her pen and just reads aloud. 

It’s a passage about old news, about how demons came to be. The way she reads it’s like she’s conjuring the history. At her core she recognizes that it’s blasphemy to think she could ever speak something into being, but still. If she could, she’d say it like this.  
Maybe louder actually. Louder than the banging at her door, hopefully. 

When she gets the locks undone somehow the sky is still flushed and rosy behind Dean and his scowl.


	8. Chapter 8

“Knock it off,” Dean says as he shoulders his way in. 

Cas locks up behind him but her fingers pull her into undoing then redoing the locks just to be sure as she asks, “What?”  
“The fucking chanting. You’re creepin’ out the kids and shit. They can hear you rows over.” 

He sets a plate covered by another plate onto the table along with a fork next to her dithering work. She stays by the door as he uncovers the baked beans and rice and half-torn slice of bread. There’s no way any of it should still be warm, dinner must’ve been a while ago. But when her stomach grumbles and she can’t help easing over she can smell the food and it warms the side of her hand when she picks up the fork. She shuffles it around until a little bit of everything makes it onto the prongs. It’s a messy process, probably harder since she’s standing up trying to balance things on the way up to her mouth. By the second bite she sits down and Dean is staring from across the table. Maybe food got on her face. She licks her lips.

Dean sighs and moves the pen from the edge of tabletop, gently puts it onto the stack of books. Right, the translations. If she looks at letters now she wouldn’t be surprised to see them crawling or something. She’s baked enough that all she wants is to finish this plate and maybe pester Chuck for another can of beans as soon as Dean is gone.   
“No more tonight, okay?” He says it as he straightens out the pen unnecessarily.

Shit, did she say the bean thing out loud?

But he didn’t even sound upset, not like when he usually tries to set limits.   
“No more what?” She feels like she sounds more suspicious than she's trying not to sound.

Dean makes a face, probably at her asking with a full mouth, thick and warm and lacking salt in her opinion. His face stays pinched as he rubs a hand down his cheek, “We’re going out tomorrow. I need you sober.”

“Well, good thing it’s not tomorrow yet.”

“It’s a supply run a town over from the last one,” he says, like he didn’t hear her. 

Ah, so he needs her eyes and ears, and mind mostly. She nods and keeps chewing even though she’s basically already made paste in her mouth. Supply runs can either be refreshing, or something that makes people quiet for a few days. When Bobby was here she could be quiet with him but it wasn’t the same. It was okay to be quiet with him. Sometimes they’d go hours just with the uneven rumble of his wheels and the unmatched sound of them turning pages of research and lore. When they did happen to turn a page at the same time he’d wink at her then go back to the text. No one climbed through her window then. Never would’ve dreamed of it with Bobby there. It’s just her and Dean now and she needs to know. “Why didn’t you follow me yesterday?”

His brows tic up immediately and there’s this twisted sort of smile he’s fighting as he asks, “Did you want me to?”

Honestly not at the time, but she can’t say that so instead she sticks another forkful of lukewarm food into her mouth. “Nevermind,” she mumbles. He’s still watching, has clicked the pen so that the inky tip is hidden and clicks it again so it’s out. 

Busy hands for a busy mind. It’s one of the sayings she read in a book at some time. She can’t ever remember the title, but the saying has been true for so many people she’s encountered, it’s hard to forget. 

With her free hand she takes the pen away and interrupts his indignant inhale.  
“What are the priorities for the run?”

He doesn’t say anything at first but she was ready for that so she just keeps eating, runs her thumb up and down the pen’s clip. Once she puts her fork down and picks up her roll of bread he sighs across from her.

“Food and intel. You finish this?”  
He pats his hand onto the stack of papers and leaves it there.

The dilemma is so unexpected: would she drop the pen or the bread to reach for him?   
“No,” she says, working to swallow the bread down. 

The look on his face is asking how she’s supposed to be at two places at once.   
“I’ll finish it before morning,” and she sits up like that will make her sober.  
Dean’s smarter than that. “If I’m gonna use you out there you need to sleep.”

“I know.”  
She knows that. She’ll sleep when it’s done. Maybe she can focus better now that something’s in her stomach. And so far it seems as if it’ll stay down just fine. She pushes the plate to the side and pulls the books and papers to her, Dean lifting his hand away to let her, except for one book. He takes and opens the one at the bottom of the pile and leans back in his chair, crosses his ankle over a knee. 

There’s just the glow of light, the wind outside, and him reading, and Cas translating. Sometimes he picks up her finished notes and reads over them but doesn’t ask her anything, just goes back to the book he was reading. 

She leans forward as she writes, as the night goes on, and it hurts. It’s a dull rhythm right there through her clothes where her chest presses against the table and her bruise slightly rekindles. That was just yesterday, right? It’s too cool out these days to wear anything particularly low cut anyway but she still makes a mental note to herself to avoid certain tops tomorrow. She doesn’t need for him to have another reason to think about leaving her behind. 

Perhaps an hour later he shuts the book and takes her papers with him, even the unfinished ones. All he’d said at the door was to be ready around dawn.  
She used to be able to depend on the beep of his watch alarm but as she gets ready for bed she cracks the window just above where she sleeps to make sure the birds wake her up. It ends up being the worst sleep she’s had in a while.


End file.
